Lawless has a vision

RECYCLED STYLE: Green candidate in Hamilton West Jennifer Lawless is heading back home for a crack at the electorate and her favourite op shops.

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An avid op-shopper who helped found a roller derby league in Wellington and, at a nudge, would recall how to butcher a home killed mutton, has thrown her hat in the ring for the Hamilton West electorate.

Green Party challenger Jennifer Lawless will have a tough time against incumbent MP Tim Macindoe and Labour's Sue Moroney and, at a lowly 31 on the Green's list, will find it near impossible to gain a seat in the House on current polling.

Green policy was to court only the party vote in election year and, for a first timer, Lawless said her placing was a positive sign and like her party she was in it for the long term.

"That's why young people like the Greens," she said. "Because it is the party with the longest-term political vision, quite literally.

"We want a functioning society in one hundred years. Not just until the election, or until we finish with politics or retire."

Lawless grew up on a farm at Te Uku on Raglan Harbour, where the Waitetuna River flowed through the backyard and living off the land was mandatory.

"My dad taught me if you can kill it you can eat it," she said. "That was the rule."

Whitebaiting, kayaking and fishing for flounder and kahawai took place in the lower reaches of the Waitetuna and the freezer was always full of home-killed meat.

"It was a really awesome way to grow up and I realise how hard that is to give people. It really instilled in me the values I want New Zealanders to have and pass on to their kids.

"It was really nice . . . There's none of that now."

She said land intensification upstream had left the Waitetuna a "cow poo mud flat" and she was determined to make changes to better the environment.

"As a community we need to be making decisions that protect everybody's right to that water."

Lawless was sitting on one of the wooden benches on Commerce St, Frankton when the Waikato Times spoke to her, after just coming out of one of the many op shops in the area.

"I love op shopping," Lawless said.

What started as a schoolgirl necessity turned into a craze and she has made long-lasting friendships with people she has met in the stores.

Her father died when she was 13 years old and her mother was a primary school teacher with two children to fend for.

The former Hamilton Girls' High School student got her first job at a local blueberry farm when she was 14 and learned how to be resourceful.